New Belgium Just Changed Fat Tire’s Beer Recipe After 32 Years

New Belgium Just Changed Fat Tire’s Beer Recipe After 32 Years

For much more than 3 decades, New Belgium Brewery Company’s Extra fat Tire has been a single of the most recognizable and reliable beers of the craft brewery movement. When the simple-ingesting amber ale debuted in 1991, the craft brewery scene was in its infancy, and the market — along with the earth at substantial — has improved a whole lot considering that then.

Now, on the other hand, Extra fat Tire is shifting with it.

On January 18th, New Belgium is formally debuting a manufacturer-new Body fat Tire. Not only does the iconic beer obtain a beauty makeover with new branding and artwork for its bottles, but the beer alone is now getting brewed with a full new recipe. The brewery describes the reimagined amber ale as “straightforward ingesting, with a medium human body, crisp end, and deep gold coloration” with a taste profile of “refined caramel and floral aromas and light-weight bitterness.”

“Longtime Fats Tire drinkers will plainly figure out the unique Fat Tire flavor when tasting the new recipe,” recipe developer and New Belgium Brewmaster Christian Holbrook explained in a assertion. “So much, many are telling us they desire the crisper, brighter edition and experience enthusiastic for the improve.”

fat tire cans

New Belgium Brewing

Regardless of whether longtime Body fat Tire adherents in the end take to the reformulation or not remains to be witnessed (ideally, New Belgium would like to prevent a New Coke predicament), but the dilemma continues to be: why make the alter to commence with? It is really not like Excess fat Tire was struggling. According to the manufacturer alone, the beer was the 16th best-providing craft manufacturer in the U.S. past year if it were a standalone brewery, Fat Tire would rank as the nation’s 18th largest.

Well, Body fat Tire has often promoted local weather advocacy — in 2020, it turned the nation’s first carbon-neutral beer — and the new Unwanted fat Tire is extra dedicated to this mission than ever right before. Just take a look at the beer’s Instagram website page and you can expect to see that all posts prior to the rebranding have been scrubbed, and most new posts concentration on sustainability and local climate action. Unwanted fat Tire is on a mission to help save the planet, and to get the phrase out, the beer has grabbed headlines by altering its iconic recipe.

“We are embarking on a wholesale reimagining of our recipe and the legendary Fat Tire manufacturer to inspire the future generation close to improved beer and a better planet,” Adam Fetcher, Sr. Director of Comms, Digital & Public Engagement at New Belgium & Bell’s Brewery, explained to me in an e-mail. “Craft beer has come a extensive way considering that we aided set it on the map, and the weather disaster — which threatens the really beer we make — continues to get worse each individual yr.

Now is the time to enlist each individual one man or woman in the battle from local climate alter, and we want to engage in our part in mobilizing beer drinkers. So we’re taking a major stage ahead with Body fat Tire, in two techniques: 1) Generating a crisper, brighter, and even superior Excess fat Tire that will permit us to arrive at a broader audience of beer drinkers and local weather advocates, and 2) Debuting a daring new glimpse to highlight our deep and ongoing investments in climate answers, to assistance encourage the upcoming technology of beer drinkers to be a part of us.”

In a natural way, leading to this sort of a big adjust to a longstanding beloved product or service carries hazards, such as alienating or angering that product’s core sector. Fetcher explained to me he’s informed of these challenges, but eventually has religion in Fats Tire’s new recipe. “We know a transform like this will be difficult for longtime admirers, having said that, we inspire them to check out the new recipe,” Fetcher mentioned. “We strongly feel our new recipe and the new brand name will assist Body fat Tire acquire renewed momentum, make a higher constructive effects for our world and connect with the subsequent technology — just as we’ve inspired an overall era of craft beer admirers up right up until now.”

a can of fat tire next to a glass of beer

Ryan Brower

A single of our senior editors (and beer fans) Ryan Brower, who was a admirer of the first Extra fat Tire, has presently experienced a likelihood to test the reimagined model. Here’s precisely what he thinks of the new recipe:

“I do not loathe it. It is sort of a combo involving a blonde ale and a lager that hits fairly crisp and has way much more of a hop profile than the first Fats Tire. Off the bat, savvy drinkers will recognize hints of the OG malt bill and yeast, but this is a snappy drinker that lends by itself to numerous diverse instances than the primary — assume ball online games, heat weather conditions BBQs and the like. Amber ales have not been a style beer drinkers have been trying to get out for decades (myself involved, even although I adore a excellent one, the only a single I have sought out in new yrs has been Troeg’s Nugget Nectar). And though I am saddened by an OG craft recipe transforming, I do consider this is a valiant hard work and something that I could possibly be much more inclined to purchase for quick-ingesting events. I just wish it experienced been an addition to the Fat Tire spouse and children and not a full overhaul, as we’ve now received to pour one particular out for a accurate American craft beer OG.”

If you might be seeking to try out the new Extra fat Tire for you, get a sixer or 12-pack from Drizly.

New Belgium Brewing